Australia Dancing - Lowe-Henricks, Kathryn (1938

Lowe-Henricks, Kathryn (1938 - 2005)

Queensland Newspapers: Portrait of Kathryn Lowe-Henricks, 1998

Born in Southern California, Kathryn Lowe-Henricks began her dancing career at the age of nine in San Francisco Ballet’s production of Nutcracker. She joined the Children’s Ballet Theatre of California the following year appearing in over ten of their productions until a stage fire injured a fellow dancer and the company closed in 1950. Her first classical ballet studies were with French dancers Francine and Jolene Lanteri, followed by several years with Bronislava Nijinska, Mia Slavenska, and David Lichine. In 1954 she began study in contemporary dance with Lester Horton in Los Angeles where she performed with Alvin Ailey, Bella Lewitsky and Carmen de Lavalade. In her teens she appeared in films, danced on live television and in musical comedy.

Following graduation from high school Lowe-Henricks attended the University of California, taking time out from her studies to tour with the Chicago Opera Ballet under the direction of Ruth Page and studying in New York with Jose Limon and Martha Graham. An automobile accident in France in 1960 caused permanent injury to her right leg ending her ballet career. Following appearances with the Charles Weidman and the Mary Tiffany dance companies, Lowe-Henricks gave up performing to concentrate on teaching and choreography.

In 1965 Lowe-Henricks migrated to Australia with her husband, Don Lowe, and two year old daughter, Jeremy. In Townsville, she worked with Ann Roberts with whom she later helped develop Dance North. While in Melbourne she appeared as a professional actress at St. Martin’s Theatre under the direction of George Fairfax. In 1970 she and her family returned to the United States due to family illness. She established the Kathryn Lowe School of Dance and the Kathryn Lowe Dance Ensemble in Southern California.

In 1976, the family returned to Australia where Lowe-Henricks worked with Shirley McKechnie at Australia’s first B.A. dance course at Rusden State College in Melbourne. She was appointed to the position of dance officer of the Theatre Board of the Australia Council in late 1978. Over the next five years she was involved in a number of major initiatives in dance development: the establishment of general grants to small contemporary dance companies; the establishment of the Australia/New Zealand International Choreographers and Composers Dance Course; Dance North, and Dance Works; the first Australian choreographic registry; choreographic development grants and the funding and national recognition of Ausdance. She also participated in the Rotherwood project, establishing a long-term plan for dance development and is the author of Dance in Australia: A Report to the Australia Council, the first and only document produced by the commonwealth government tracing the contemporary history of funding to Australian dance.

In 1982, Lowe-Henricks moved to Adelaide where she was the assistant director of Carclew Youth Performing Arts Council, was on the board of Australian Dance Theatre and the Come-Out Festival and a teacher at the Centre for the Performing Arts. In 1977 she was appointed by the Federal Minister of the Arts as chairman of the dance committee of the Australia Council, a position she held for three years. In 1988 she moved to Brisbane to work with the Queensland Theatre Company. In 1990 she was appointed manager for the performing arts and writing for Arts Queensland. While at Arts Queensland she established and managed the Writer’s Trains of 1990, 1992 and participated as a writer in the 1996 trek to outback Queensland. Under her management, funding writers and writing projects increased in Queensland from $50,000 per year to several hundred thousands and initiated funding to contemporary music, small dance companies and designed and developed a regional touring program that eventually stretched from Brisbane through regional and rural Queensland to Northern Territory and Western Australia. She became an Australian citizen in 1992. During her time in Australia she served on the boards of several dance and theatre companies including Sydney Dance Company, One Extra Dance Company (Chairperson), Dance Works, Australian Dance Theatre, Dance North Patch Theatre Company (Chairperson), Queensland Arts Council, Come Out Youth Festival (Adelaide), Ausdance South Australia (Chairperson).

In 1997, Lowe-Henricks retired from Arts Queensland due to illness. Her first novel, The Man with the Diamond Bracelet, was published in 1997, followed by her second novel, The Girl who Stepped on Bread, in 1998. In 1999 Lowe-Henricks returned to the United States and lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where she wrote and taught until her death. She was the recipient of the award for lifetime achievement at the Australian Dance Awards in 2005.

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